Tesla CEO Elon Musk used his social media handle X to praise Indian engineer Ashok Elluswamy for his crucial role in developing Tesla’s Autopilot technology.
Elluswamy, the first engineer on Tesla’s Autopilot team, recounted his experience on social networking site X, underlining Musk’s role in improving AI and autonomous driving at Tesla.
Elluswamy also said that without Musk’s guidance and encouragement, the electric car maker would not have reached great heights. From the early days of the Autopilot project in 2014, Elluswamy described the group’s first challenges. They worked with minimal computing resources – only about 384 KB of memory.
Despite the team’s skepticism about Musk’s ambitious goals for lane keeping, lane changing, and vehicle control, Musk’s relentless drive pushed them to achieve these milestones. By 2016, Tesla decided to develop all of Autopilot’s computing capabilities in-house. This task has typically taken other companies more than a decade.
The Tesla team demonstrated their commitment and Musk’s leadership by completing it in 11 months. Musk reshared Elluswamy’s post to express his gratitude and admiration for his work.
Elluswamy’s journey with Tesla began after Musk posted a tweet seeking candidates for the Autopilot team. The Indian-born robotics engineer has been with the company for nearly a decade and rose to lead all AI/autopilot software.
Elon Musk acknowledged Elluswamy’s role in Tesla’s growth. “Thank you, Ashok!”. He added before getting into how Elluswamy went on to say that Elluswamy was the first Tesla employee to join Tesla’s AI/Autopilot unit. After years of service and development, Elluswamy eventually rose to lead the entire AI/Autopilot software.
Elon Musk believes that without Elluswamy and the team he leads, Tesla would be just another car company looking for an independent supplier that doesn’t exist.